


When You Were Born They Put You In A Little Box And Slapped a Label On It

by Basic_instinct40



Category: The Magicians (TV), The Magicians - Lev Grossman
Genre: Angst, Feelings, Letters, Love Letters, M/M, Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 14:34:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19792909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Basic_instinct40/pseuds/Basic_instinct40
Summary: A letter from Eliot to Quentin.A letter from Quentin to Alice.A letter from me to you.I know these things now and I wrote you this letter so you can know too. Your neglect doesn’t hurt as much as it used to, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t kill apart of myself to make it so. Please take care of yourself and wish the same of me.Forever yours, in some strange way.





	When You Were Born They Put You In A Little Box And Slapped a Label On It

**Author's Note:**

> I prefer the letter Eliot wrote Quentin in Book 1 compared to the episode "The Flying Forest" also this is a very wide no Alice hate zone.

A firm, yet loving, hand grasps his shoulder. “Eliot,” Margo snapped bringing his eyes away from Quentin’s sleeping face. He realized that this wasn't the first time she had to say his name and while she would give him more patience than she spared with anyone else, she was still Margo. She raised her perfect eyebrows up at him, summoning his full attention. “It’s time, El, our Kingdom can’t wait anymore.” He nodded at her. “I know, I just wish he would --”

“I know, I know, but he needs to rest. Five surgeries, El,” she reminded him. Margo looked at Quentin, her features softening to take in the younger boy’s injuries. The look only lasted for a second before she slid back on the mask of disinterest, but Eliot knew her face better than anyone and knew what Q meant to her. She snorted once through her nose, flipping her hand. “It’s not like the puppy was the perfect picture of health to begin with.”

Eliot raised up from his chair and wrapped his friend in his arms. She pretended to resist for 2.5 seconds, then melted in his warm arms, fiercely wrapping her own around his waist. Eliot leaned down to press a kiss to her sweet smelling hair, wishing that this was enough to ease the ache in his chest. It used to be. For so long it had just been the two of them, unstoppable forces, even in a world of magic. Eliot had booze, drugs, magic and plenty of first-year boys to go through. He had someone who understood him and he understood her in return. What more could he want or need?

It turned out that those unknown wants and needs came in the form of a shaggy-haired nerd on too many SSRIs, with a face that looked like bottled sunshine. From the moment that Quentin had come stumbling out of those trees and onto the Brakebill’s lawn all the mundane debauchery of those other people and past times were over for Eliot. He just didn't know it yet. He pulled away from the memory and Margo’s embrace. “I wish there was a way we could let him know we were leaving.” It made him sad to know that Quentin would wake alone, especially after Alice.

Margo, it seemed, thought the same and her eyes took on a faraway look. “Write him a letter,” she suggested. Eliot gave her a quizzical look “Why Bambi?,” he teased her, “Aren't we feeling sentimental?” She slapped his arm hard enough to hurt. “Fuck you, dickwad. It’s a nice goddamn gesture.” She folded her arms and Eliot thought she was done, but she then she did something very un-Margo-like.

Using a softer tone that was abnormal of her, with her big brown eyes transfixed on her heels, she explained to him, “My Dad used to send them to my Mom and me when he travelled for work.” Margo smiled at the memory. “Sometimes we wouldn't even get them till after he was back home and the three of us would read them together.” She shrugged and looked up at him, her face hardening. “I’m just saying, bitch, a letter is nice.”

“Bambi,” was all he said, reaching for one of her tiny hands. He knew what it cost her to talk about her Dad and once more he felt nothing but overwhelming love and respect for the women who stood before him. He kissed her palm in gratitude. “A letter is good. You always come up with the best ideas.”

She smirked at him, pleased with his praise. “Naturally,” hugging him tightly once more, she told him. “Write your letter, then let’s go. I want to say goodbye to Alice’s grave before we head to Whitespire.” She released him to walk over to Quentin’s bed, bending down to press a kiss to his forehead, leaving behind a dark plum lip print. “See you later, Q,” she whispered into his hairline. With one last look at Eliot, she left the tent, leaving Eliot alone again with his thoughts.

  
He exhaled from his nose, wishing he could crawl into the huge centaur-size bed with Q and sleep as long as he had, but given Quentin’s reaction the last time he woke up beside Eliot he didn't think it would be appropriate. “Best not go down that crooked memory lane,” he thought. He left Quentin’s tent for the first time that day to find paper and something to write with. When one of the nurses presented him with an honest-to-god fucking quill he confused them with his laughter. “No, no, it’s not anything you did,” he tried to assure the confused Filliorian, who looked at him like he was crazy. “It’s just my Q -- my friend, who’s in a coma would get a kick out of this,” Eliot tried to explain to the nurse as he waved the quill around wildly. The nurse gave a short bow. “Let me know if you need anything else, your Highness,” looking as if she wanted anything-but as she backed away slowly.

Eliot wiped away his manic tears, not sure if they were from sadness or the hilarity of the situation. He already missed Margo. He missed Quentin every minute that passed and he was caught off guard with the recondite void that used to be filled by Alice Quinn. Knowing that he only had so much time left, Eliot retired to his own tent to write his letter. What does one say to a man you’ve been secretly in love with for the better part of a year after their girlfriend dies by sacrificing herself to save all of her friends? The very same friends that help to break up her relationship only days before? “Hmph,” Eliot pondered as he laid out his writing materials on a wooden desk. “Haven't seen that particular Hallmark card.”

There was no use in trying to take back or fix the incalculable fuck-ups he had inflicted on his friends after he had killed Mike. There was only moving forward and trying everyday to be better. It didn't mean that Eliot didn't have regrets; only that this was the way he knew how to make amends. He wasn't his Father: a cruel man willing to hit Eliot’s mother, then beg for forgiveness, only to do more of the same the next night. Eliot had never wanted a family and now here he was, a newly-crowned King in a mythical land, scrambling to keep it together. He rubbed the bridge of his nose as he stared out into nothing, then dipping his quill into the jet-black ink he began to write,

> **_Dear Q,_ **
> 
> **_Hell of thing getting you out of that dungeon. Richard showed up, finally, for which I suppose we should be grateful, though G-D knows he doesn't make it easy._ **
> 
> **_We wanted to stay, Q, but it was hard and getting harder everyday. The centaurs said it wasn't_ **  
>  **_working. But if you're reading this then you woke up after all. I'm sorry about everything. I know you are too. I know I said I didn't need a family to become who I was supposed to be, but it turned out that I did . And it was you._ **
> 
> **_We’ll meet again._ **
> 
> **_\--E_ **

If there was more to say, it was lost to him and Eliot knew with every part of his being that he would see Q again. He wrote a dramatic Q on the center on the envelope, giving a mental ‘Fuck you’ to his childhood bullies who made fun of him for learning calligraphy. Gathering his clothing and leaving instructions to the hospital staff on what to do when King Quentin woke up, Eliot rides towards his kingdom with Margo, never looking back.

~~

He had been putting off the letter since he had been back on Earth and he knows that he could have picked a better setting than his cold clinical office, but Quentin wants -- needs -- to have this done with. Alice and her parents had never been close, even before Charlie passed away, but he doesn't want them to find out through other means. So here he is at the office, 7:38 on a Friday night, writing a ‘I’m-sorry-I-fucked-around-on-your-daughter-then-got-her-killed’ letter.

“Shit,” Quentin’s whispers to himself. He’s a little-okay, a lot-drunk and he wasn't supposed to mix alcohol with his antidepressants that he had gone back on when he had given up magic. “Yet magic found me anyway,” he thought, leaning back in his office chair. Emily-fucking-Greenstreet, Professor Mayakovsky’s former mistress, was here at the same finacial firm. The place Dean Fogg had sent Quentin when he had come back from Fillory, his tail in-between his legs. Quentin drained his coffee mug of the cheap wine he had smuggled in earlier after his disastrous lunch with Emily. “Guess this is where you go when you can't even succeed at blowing yourself up,” he thought darkly.

Quentin isn't sure what he pictured his life was going to be like when he stepped away from magic, with not even a word back to Eliot and Margo other than to say he was alive. Everything and everyone in his life that he had once held precious was now riddled with holes, and try as he might, Quentin couldn't mend them. He wanted to chalk it up to growing up, but there was too much hope left over in him to think this was how everyone ended up. Quentin pulled out the wine bottle under his desk and did his best to kill that hope.

Alice had been a hard woman to love, but he was no walk in the park to love either. He realized that. He hated himself for the way he had made her feel the last days of her life and wished that he could put it all on Margo and Eliot, but Quentin could admit to himself, if no one else, here in the cold embrace of his dark office, that it was only a matter of time before he fell into bed with one or both of them. He wasn't sure what kind of person that made him and he wasn't in any hurry to investigate that further, but he could write a letter to Alice’s parents. Quentin could do this one good thing in the storm of fuck-ups he had created.

Swishing the wine around in his mouth he finished typing out the email,

> **Daniel and Stephanie,**

**I’m sorry to state this so bluntly, but there's really no pretext. Alice is gone. She died, saving me, our friends, and our entire world. This might sound like hyperbole, but I swear to god it’s not. She gave her life, knowingly, willing, for us, and she’s not coming back. I’m sorry.**

**I don’t even know how to start telling you the whole story, but it doesn't matter why she died. It just matters how. Your daughter--your beautiful daughter who I loved far more than my actions said, who deserved a better man than me, a better friend than me-- she gave her life to save mine. Because of her, you're getting an email that my parents aren't. It’s horribly unfair, but it’s what she wanted.**

**It’s what she always wanted, to shoulder all of the weight. Because despite her insecurities and her penchant to demure, deep down she knew she was the best of all of us. Smarter, stronger, kinder. She was who we all wanted to be. Just being in her presence taught us how to be our better selves. So of course, her last actions in life would do the same. It’s so cruel that her inner goodness is what ultimately took her from us. I’ll never know a truer kindness than your daughter, I’ll miss her everyday.**

**I’m so horribly sorry for your loss,**

**Q.**

He reads it back to himself, each typed up word somehow evaporating the alcohol from his bloodstream, so that by the time he finishes reading it Quentin feels heartbreakingly sober. Numbing the trauma of what happened to him and his friends in Fillory will undoubtedly come back to bite him in the ass, but his nights are filled with memories of the hours after Alice died.

Margo, usually an impassive woman, shocked both Eliot and Quentin when she became nearly catatonic, curling up into a ball and refusing to move. Eliot had let her be, using what healing spells he knew to the point of exhaustion so that Quentin didn't bleed out. When Eliot had done everything he could, he flopped down to rest next to his friends; two alive, one dead. Quentin remembered the smell of the strange Filliorian dirt that surrounded them. It had smelled like burnt ozone and nitrogen dioxide scattered in the air after a bad storm. Margo had been the first one of them to break the silence. “We have to bury her,” her voice had cracked from going unused. “We have to bury Alice here, where she’s a hero. We can’t let them forget.”

Quentin had wanted to argue with Margo, say something mean, but what would’ve been his challenge? What was the point of her and Alice’s fights now? Margo was right: Alice was a hero. She had defeated the Beast when supposed stronger Magicians, like Fogg or Jane Chatwin, had ran. It had been Alice, no one else. Eliot had just given a feeble, “Alight,” at the notion, but immediately set about doing it. He had depleted all his magical resources on Quentin’s arm, so Eliot had woefully dug Alice’s grave by himself with a shovel he found behind the shed of the wellspring. Neither man had thought to ask Margo, who seemed to only have enough energy to uncurl herself from one spot and crawled over to Quentin. She had propped him up against her, so they could both bear witness to Eliot as he laid Alice to rest.

Those hours replayed on a nonstop loop in Quentin’s head and it took a considerable amount of alcohol and Lexapro for him to make it another day. He dragged himself up and around because Alice didn't give her life for him to throw his away. One of these days, Quentin knew, he would have to get out of this office, get out of his head. Right now, there was only sending this letter. Quentin drank from his mug and let the cursor blink over send.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr.  
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
